Children with impaired emotion knowledge are likely to also experience difficulties with social skills (Bukato, 2008) and internalising and externalising behaviour problems (Trentacosta & Fine, 2009, Fine et al, 2003). Given that children with developmental disabilities are both at risk of developing behaviour problems (Roberts & Lawton, 2001), and may have impairments in emotion knowledge (Wishart et al, 2007, Kasari et al, 2001, Sinzig et al, 2008; Bal et al, 2010), teaching emotion knowledge skills is likely to be beneficial in helping to ameliorate the risks faced by these children, for developing behaviour problems. The research question investigated in this study was; can using an adapted version of the PATHS programme with children and adolescents aged between 9 and 18, who have developmental disabilities, improve both their emotion knowledge and their behaviour problems? Four participants were recruited, aged between nine and 18 who had developmental disabilities, one of whom served as a pilot participant. The intervention was carried out in the participants’ homes, with two one hour-long sessions a week. The measurements used included the Vineland-II, a behaviour diary and the Emotion Knowledge Test (EKT) - designed specifically for this research by the researcher. All participants included in the main study made improvements on the sentence-labelling task but not on the photograph-labelling task of the EKT. Participants 2 and 4 improved in regards to the number of problem behaviours displayed each week, Participant 3’s problem behaviours did not occur often enough to determine whether improvements had been made. Participant 2 improved on both of the Socialisation and Maladaptive Behaviour domains of the Vineland-II, Participant 3 improved on the Socialisation domain and Participant 4 improved on the Maladaptive Behaviour Domain, however all improvements made were small. The results indicate that there may be promise with using the PATHS programme with children with developmental disabilities, in one-to-one settings. However this research involved several limitations, such as the reliability and sensitivity of the measures used and the short length of the baseline and intervention periods. More research is needed in this area, as there are many possible social, emotional and academic benefits for these children, using the skills taught in the PATHS programme.

This dissertation describes an emotion knowledge intervention which was designed and conducted with four year old children with behaviour problems. The children’s parents and preschool teachers kept daily records of the children’s noncompliances to determine if there was any change in behaviour throughout the duration of the study. The children’s emotion knowledge and vocabulary ability were assessed and their parents completed a child behaviour checklist both before and after the intervention. The emotion knowledge intervention consisted of six sessions over a three week period. During the sessions the emotions angry, happy, sad and scared were discussed with the use of storybooks and games were played that involved identifying the emotions on faces of emotion cards and the children also practiced making the faces themselves. Results indicated that the intervention did not result in an increase in the children’s level of emotion knowledge or result in a change the children’s behaviour. Possible reasons for this lack of effect may have included an insufficient number of sessions to result in a change of emotion knowledge or the intervention may have been ineffective at increasing the children’s level of emotion knowledge.

Re-evaluating classic work in the sociology of the visual arts, this Ph.D. thesis explores the tacit and practical bases of artistic mediation with reference to curatorial exhibition making in contemporary art. Data presented here derive from a visual microethnographic study of the exhibition-making process in two elite European centres for contemporary art (London’s Institute of Contemporary Art and ARC/Musée D’Art Moderne de la ville de Paris), combined with an additional thirty-five interviews with other curatorial professionals. By focusing on the visual dimensions of curatorial work, this thesis uses a case study in the sociology of art to think more broadly about aesthetic materials as active mediators of action, or actants in the sense of actor-network theory. Drawing on work in the sociology of education, communication studies, and the sociologies of science and technology, this research explores how the material, embodied, and situated interactions between curators, objects, and environments are constructed and understood in reflexive relation to more explicitly cognitive and verbal representations, interpretations, and accounts. In planning and installing an exhibition of contemporary art, curators frame artworks and build meaning based on the material and conceptual resources at hand. The plans made by curators when preparing an exhibition and composing textual documentation are altered and elaborated during the installation of contemporary art in the physical presence of the artworks and gallery space. The disjuncture between curatorial plans and these situated actions has consequences for the public presentation and comprehension of the final exhibition. In documenting these processes as they take shape in real time and in relation to material objects, the body, and the built environment, this work aims to contribute to the on-going developments and debates that centre on the creation of a ‘strong’ cultural sociology and to extend core sociological thinking on the social structures and bases of action.

No description available.

Experiencing and expressing emotions is an essential part of psychological well-being. It is for this reason that most graphic symbol sets used in the field of AAC include an array of symbols depicting emotions. However, to date, very limited research has been done on children’s ability to recognise and use these symbols to express feelings within different cultural contexts. The purpose of the current study was to describe and compare Afrikaans and Sepedi speaking grade R children’s choice of graphic symbols when depicting four basic emotions, i.e. happy; sad; afraid; and angry. After ninety participants (44 Afrikaans and 46 Sepedi speaking) passed a pre-assessment task, they were exposed 24 emotions vignettes. Participants had to indicate the intensity the protagonist in the story would experience. The next step was for the participants to choose a graphic symbol from a 16 matrix overlay which they thought best represented the symbol and intensity. The results indicated a significant difference at a 1% level between the two groups’ selection of expected symbols to represent emotions. Afrikaans speaking participants more often chose expected symbols than Sepedi speaking participants to represent different basic emotions. Sepedi speaking participants made use of a larger variety of symbols to represent the emotions. Participants from both language groups most frequently selected expected symbols to represent happy followed by those for angry and afraid with expected symbols for sad selected least frequently. Except for a significant difference at the 1% level for happy no significant differences were present between the intensities selected by the different language groups for the other three basic emotions. No significant differences between the two gender groups’ choices of expected symbols to represent emotions or between the intensities selected by the different gender groups were observed. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Centre for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (CAAC) / Unrestricted